How (and Why) I Rewrote My Book

step by step

Hi there.

Yes, at long last I have emerged, bleary-eyed and rumpled, from my long five month hiatus I took to rewrite my book! 🧌 (See the last newsletter if you have no earthly idea what I’m talking about!)

I realized very early into the process that I was going to have to retreat into my cave and let the rest of the world pass by if I ever wanted to work through some of my lingering self-doubt and truly reconnect to the heart of the story. The drafting process can be maddening and exciting and frustrating, but it’s always special—it’s that time when the story belongs solely to you, and it’s brimming with endless potential and discovery. One reason I’m so reluctant to talk about my stories before they’ve truly taken shape is that they’re so fragile in that early stage. Its weak bones and throbbing heart are exposed and vulnerable as I try to shape the body of the story around them. Even a half-hearted “Oh that sounds interesting” can risk infecting the draft with doubt.

It definitely felt necessary to protect this draft as I went back in and reimagined and rewrote and rediscovered. I ended up being able to save a bit more from the first draft than I expected, but there was quite a bit of completely new writing as well. The book was originally written in the FMC’s third person POV with a few chapters from the MMC’s third person POV woven through it, but I followed one of my editor’s suggestions and switched her POV into first person. That alone helped me reconnect—I got to view the story through new (or rather reworked, hah) eyes and felt more viscerally connected to what was happening in it.

I’m going to get into how I tackled this particular rework below, but I wanted to take a moment to thank you guys for all of your kind words and encouragement over the last few months! Like I mentioned in the last newsletter, this was a tough pill to swallow initially, but I do think (hope 🤞) the book is better for it. I sent the draft to my editor at the beginning of the month and now all there’s left to do is wait to hear her thoughts… and make videos of my Labubus, clean my house, work on a little mini secret project you guys will be VERY into, and to start figuring out my next two books (one being the sequel to my current WIP). And, of course, actually writing a newsletter.

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Lately

I was really shocked by how gentle the start of our summer was here in Phoenix—there were a few days in May where the highs were in the upper 70s/80s rather than the 90s/100s and we even had a few rainy days! I’m worried this means summer is going to be absolutely brutal in terms of heat and drought, but we’ll see! I’m not traveling at all, in part because I have a little niece on the way next month(!!!!) and I want to be around to help out. (And I need to really buckle down on my WIP’s eventual edits.)

There are two quick book-related things I’m excited to share with you guys, though!

1. PASSENGER and WAYFARER have a new look in the UK!

   I was so excited when my UK publisher told me they were thinking about repackaging PASSENGER and WAYFARER all of these years later, and the final result is even more gorgeous than I imagined they would be! This time travel romance is like National Treasure meets Outlander—the story spans centuries and continents and has a sweeping romance I still love to this day. While these are technically UK editions, I think Waterstones can ship them internationally if you’re interested! The foil alone has me. 😍

2. Cursed girl summer starts now! THE MIRROR OF BEASTS is finally out in paperback on July 1st here in the U.S.!! 🎉 I’m so thrilled that you guys will finally be able to have matching regular editions of this book.

   

   And while I have you here… This series, more than anything else I’ve written, has completely stumped me on the promotional front. I’ve been trying to get the word out about these books since 2022 and, for whatever reason, I haven’t quite found the right way to pitch them—the story defies quick pitching. I don’t mean that in a “not like the other girls” way, but in a, “I can’t find a book/movie/tv show to comp this to that might help give readers a sense of what it’s about” way 🥲. Or maybe the algorithm is just working against me and not actually feeding these posts out to my followers?? I can’t even tell you how many longtime readers have mentioned they never saw any of my posts about the books and they therefore had no clue I had new books out. 🙈

   If you’ve read and love these books, I would be forever grateful if you took the time to review them—whether that’s a post on social media (the situation is particularly dire on Tiktok 😅), on Amazon, on B&N, on GoodReads, etc! (For example, MIRROR has under 500 reviews on Amazon which is a threshold that helps the book pop a bit more in the site’s algorithm.)

   I hate asking because you guys are already so incredibly supportive, but it would really help these books find readers who will love them. If you do end up posting a review on social media, please tag me in it so I can boost/repost it!

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Writing

I recently hosted a little Q&A over on IG asking for topics you guys might be interested in for this newsletter and ended up covering some writing tips, working in publishing, etc in my stories—it’s saved as the Q&A highlight right on my profile if you missed it!

When I saw this one, I was like, d’oh, of course it makes sense to go into more detail about this. I know a few of you requested I cover the topic, too.

So, as you may recall, this was my first time ever being asked to really burn a book to the ground and rebuild it from scratch. The biggest struggle was just wrapping my head around it and pulling myself out of the pit of self-doubt that came with failing to deliver a great story. This was especially disappointing to me because I’d been hoping this book could hit shelves next summer, but publishing timelines have gotten so much stricter and you really do need a book into copyediting a full year out from release.

Step One: Wallow - This is, indeed, an important part of the process when it comes to getting tough feedback. I am a big proponent of allowing yourself to feel your feelings—you have to move through them if you’re going to move past them. This mostly involved me staring up at my ceiling, dramatically drinking glasses of wine in the bath, and sending my author friends pitiful voice notes. I also spent a fair bit of time marveling that a tarot reader last December correctly predicted I would have to do a major revision of this project along with a few other things, but that’s a whole different story.

Step Two: Interpret the Feedback - One of the tricky things about getting feedback, even from an editor, is figuring out what’s actually at the heart of a note or critique. Nine times out of ten, the editor/early reader is right on the money and can articulate the issue well, but there are times when there’s only a general sense that something isn’t working, or the note is suggesting replacing something because of X, but fixing Y solves X. Sometimes you get the intuitive sense that the suggestion has misdiagnosed the problem, or you need someone to help you interpret what the core, deeper issue actually is. My author pals were, again, incredibly patient and generous with me as I talked through some changes and got their feedback and suggestions on them.

The reason I ultimately agreed the book needed a total gutting is how very, very big picture the notes from my editor were. The story collapses if even one of the most crucial building blocks isn’t strong enough—in this case, my editor was particularly concerned that the FMC’s voice wasn’t coming through, and her emotional arc was muddled. From that, I realized I needed to rework her character and backstory, and those changes trickled out to the story’s bigger set-up and her dynamic with the MMC.

There was one big note I didn’t end up taking, which (sorry to be so vague!) involved expanding more on the world and the political situation, but I realized what the story world actually needed was to shrink a bit (for now) while finding new stakes that were still personal to the FMC and provided emotional and external conflict.

Step Three: Re-Brainstorm and Re-Outline - One thing I’ve realized about myself as a writer is that outlining the story is most helpful to me while revising, rather than drafting. I like to have a general skeleton of the story’s structure that I’m working with, while still leaving room to explore and discover cool things about the characters and world along the way.

As you guys might remember, I tend to build my plot from the main character’s arc, so brainstorming the character’s new backstory, desire, and ghost was crucial to figuring out what parts of the original draft I could keep, and which moments and characters had to be scrapped. I fear I kept a bit too many moments from the first draft that I loved simply because I couldn’t bear to cut them yet, and that’s probably why this draft is like 180k words long. 💀 One thing I’m going to really look at in edits is making sure all of these moments are actively pushing up against/challenging the main characters to grow.

Armed with the new vision for the character, I set about outlining the story’s reworked direction. Again, outlines are less helpful to me as I’m drafting, but because this was an odd drafting/editing hybrid I went ahead and outlined the story to get a feel for it, to figure out how its reveals should be paced out, and to remind myself of little beats and things I want to include in each chapter. I went in and laid out the subplots (romantic, political, the mystery aspect) separately to make sure that they were layering correctly throughout the story.

Step Four: Exploratory Writing - Character voice is so crucial to making a story gel together that I knew I needed to do a bit of exploring to find a new voice for my FMC that felt authentic and could help expand not just her unique magic, but also her world. (This will, of course, make way more sense when I can actually tell you about the book. 💀) I played around with different tones and did some freewriting until I found a voice that felt warm, witty, and a little mischievous. One of my favorite things about her is that she has a knack for brazening her way through situations—and she’s incredibly good at tormenting the MMC.

My MMC still has a few POV chapters in this book, but I kept his in third person POV—this is something I found pretty effective in OUTLANDER when I first read it years ago, and it felt more natural for his character to have a bit of narrative distance. He is my secretive, petty, but ultimately noble Scorpio-coded king. 😂 I was able to keep more of his chapters, especially once he is Down Bad and embarrasses himself with his romantic musings and, shudder, feelings.

Step Five: Drafting - With my loose outline, I dove into the actual drafting. I was able to keep the most from Act 1 of the initial draft plot-wise, so it was a nice way to ease myself into the process until I felt like I was on solid ground with the new story and FMC’s voice. My editor suggested sending her some early chapters to make sure we were on the same page, so I waited until I had gotten through Act 1, then sent it over. When I got her thumbs up, I dove back in and tried to take 2-3 days on every chapter to keep myself on pace.

I think I got about halfway through the book before I started drifting from the outline, which was fine—the loose outline allows me to make adjustments along the way while keeping the overall story from getting away from me. These drifts are usually caused by me 1) thinking of a better/more interesting idea 2) having had to make earlier adjustments after I realized something wouldn’t work or 3) were trims/speed aheads because of the pacing.

Step Six: Doubting - Endless rounds of: Is this story exciting enough? Is everything moving too slowly? Is the banter bantering? Is there enough yearning? Is this going to work in today’s market when it’s not in the same vein as the other popular romantasy books? and pushing through to keep writing. Back to my author friends with more pitiful voice notes so they could prop up my flagging self worth with encouragement.

Step Seven: Drafting is Done… Now to Listen - If I hadn’t gotten quite so behind, I would have broken up the acts of the books by listening to each one as I finished it. I’ve mentioned in other newsletters I’ve come to rely on text to speech programs like Voice Dream Reader for proofreading and to check on how the prose is flowing. This has been a real game changer for me!

Instead, I listened to the whole book at once and was relieved that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. 😂 I wove in a few thematic beats and a bit of foreshadowing here and there that I kept notes on as I was drafting and trimmed about 5k words out of the book as I listened.

Step Eight: Hit Send - Again, if I hadn’t been weeks behind, I would have asked a friend to read the draft before I sent it off to my editor, but I couldn’t bear the thought of asking one of my poor author pals to read a 180k beast in a few days. At this point, I just needed to get it to my editor, so I sent it over and proceeded to Doordash myself a nice dinner.

That was the process this time around! Let me know if you guys have any questions by leaving them in the comments below. ❤️

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Upcoming Events

August 1st at 6:30 PM - Changing Hands Phoenix 🎟️

I’m so excited to be hosting my wonderful friend Jennifer Lynn Barnes at Changing Hands in August! This event does require a ticket (which includes a copy of GLORIOUS RIVALS)—you can nab one right here. I’m happy to sign any books you’d like to bring with you!

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Recent Favorites

Some of the below recommendations may use affiliate links I earn a small commission from—you are under no obligation to purchase anything or even use the links! ❤️

• My friend Emily Ritter has a newsletter (and company!) geared toward helping authors with social media—she’s been helping me organize and brainstorm ideas the last few months and I can’t recommend her newsletter and help enough.

• The Unmaking of the Historical Romance Genre over on BookRiot is a great read—historical romance novels were my gateway into reading romance in my 20s and I’m still devouring them to this day. I’ve always wondered what made some readers (especially readers of fantasy and contemporary romance) reluctant to dip their toes into historical romance, but I think this article does a good job highlighting the perception problems the subgenre has. Would you guys be interested in me highlighting some favorite historical romance reads in this newsletter, maybe trope by trope?

• Because I live on the surface of the sun, and it is dry AF here, and I also never drink enough water, I’m always looking for ways to add some hydration back into my face. 💀 I’ve been testing out the “skin flooding” method of using a ton of moisturizing toners and essences and so far it’s been amazing. I start by spraying Caudalie’s Grape Water Moisturizing Face Mist, then I use haruharu Wonder Black Rice Probiotics Barrier Essence, either Divine Skin: Rose 001 Hydrating Essence from Pat McGrath or TIRTIR Milk Skin Rice Toner, and I’m testing out this Olehenriksen Barrier Booster Vitamin C Milky Toner Essence to replace my last Vitamin C serum, which my skin did NOT like.

• I’ve been on a real perfume journey since last year and have way too many bottles to count now (🙈), but I found a new little gem at Sephora and felt like I had to share it: High Tea by Brown Girl Jane is absolutely scrumptious. It’s what you might call a crowd pleaser—a burst of citrus right at the top that settles into a warm vanilla that blooms with orange blossom and a hint of chai. In the dry down, you start getting more of the milky quality and the pastry accord. This is not an especially complex or challenging scent, but it’s extremely well blended and feels like a sunlit tea party and wraps around you like a warm hug. I also love their Carousel for autumn days! And if you like High Tea, I think you will LOVE Maison Mataha’s new one, Printemps Blanc, which is absolutely worth getting a decant of to test out—it also features a light tea note and some gorgeous orange blossom, jasmine, vanilla and sandalwood.

  Another light, sweet floral tea perfume I LOVE is Valentino’s Donna Born in Roma Green Stravaganza —it’s such a pretty little scent that layers well with others without being cloying. Looking for something a bit more citrus to try the next time you’re at Sephora? I really enjoy Armani’s Acqua di Gioia line, both the fresh citrus zest of the OG and the fruity depth of the Intense flanker. Okay, I will stop talking about perfume now, but let me know if you’re in need of any recommendations!